Astonishingly talented young saxophonist Carla Marciano has been taking people’s breath away with her mastery of Coltrane’s techniques and her own fresh style. We caught up with the new horn voice from Italy.
Please tell us about how you became a musician, your training and influences.
I think I have inherited this passion from my father Giovanni. He was a guitarist but then he decided to become a doctor. Musicians have always frequented my house. I have been listening to jazz records since I was a child. I started to study the piano at around eleven years of age.
Coltrane’s music means for me a synthesis of energy and equilibrium, it’s a spiritual and material involvement. It’s something magical
At thirteen, I was already attracted by the wind instruments, but since I was asthmatic they refused to buy me a saxophone. Then, on the day of my sixteenth birthday my father gave me a magnificent surprise…
The saxophone became my greater passion. I spent — and I still spend — whole days trying to learn jazz from records. Saxophone had only just become a discipline in the conservatory, so I decided to take the diploma in clarinet. I studied a lot, I took my diploma in clarinet in 3 years instead of the 7 years which was normal, to hurry… and to have all the necessary time for my jazz.
John Coltrane has surely been the musician that stylistically and spiritually has mostly influenced me. I have spent a lot of years listening to his records trying to learn all that was possible for me. I have also studied a lot listening to the records of Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Bill Evans, Clifford Brown, Thelonious Monk and many others.
What is the part of Italy you are from like and does it influence you as a musician?
I’m from Salerno, near Naples, in the South of Italy. Being from the south has given me an energetic and passionate nature but I am also very reflexive, fussy and precise — and these last characteristics surely aren’t normal for the Southern people! These characteristics (energy, passion, reflexivity and exactness) I think are also in my music.
Trane’s Groove is, unsurprisingly, your reaction to the late John Coltrane. What does Trane’s music mean to you and what did you attempt to do with the album?
Coltrane’s music means for me a synthesis of energy and equilibrium, it’s a spiritual and material involvement. It’s something magical.
I don’t expect anything in particular from Trane’s Groove, it is simply a “sincere thanks” to this great artist for the unbelievable feeling I get from listening to his music. My “Coltranian period” was leaving a sign in my musical life, so when the idea of this record was born, Coltrane was in my mind. I wanted to realize a “sincere CD”, in a short time, without too much arrangement, through which I was able to freely express myself and without constraints. A record in which I succeeded in alternating the energy and the liberty of phrasing, which suit the modal passages, to the sweetness and melodiousness of the ballads, which I love a lot.
I hope, naturally, that Trane’s Groove is liked and can communicate some emotions to the people who listen to it.
You have assembled a great band, please tell us more about them.
Alessandro LaCorte, Aldo Vigorito, Dario Deidda and Donato Cimaglia are wonderful musicians, I admire them musically and humanly. All of them are essentially jazz-musicians highly regarded in Italy. They often play as sidemen for great Italian and international jazz musicians.
Dario often plays also with Italian pop artists as Pino Daniele, Fiorella Mannoia and others. Alessandro, instead, has also a particular interest in electronic music. You can listen to his piece ‘India’s Mood’, number seven on my CD, to see how he works with samples.
Do you think it is harder to get heard as an Italian woman jazz musician? And if so how are you going to change that?
I think that the music doesn’t have sex. The difficulties that an Italian woman can meet are no more or less those that a man from any other country can meet, unless you yourself create any problems…
As regards me, the majority of the musicians that I have met have been kind and available.
It’s very hard to get heard, especially if you aren’t enterprising and I’m not enterprising at all! However, I have a lot of patience and I always continue along my way, without hurrying, never losing trust in one ‘divine justice’ which will give the correct recognition to whoever has deserved it and has worked hard, be you a man or a woman.
You are accomplished in the art of painting, do the two art forms influence each other in your work?
I have had these two passions since I was a child. They have always cohabited inside of me. Then, I felt the music passion was the greatest.
I have studied painting for many years. My painting style is hyperrealist. I think that perhaps my painting, like my music, has a ‘hypnotic’ character, I mean they leave you suspended in an almost surreal atmosphere. What do you think about this?
There are two pictures of mine in the cover-book of my record Trane’s Groove.
The notes and the colours have simply been two ways to communicate with the world, because I have always been very taciturn.
In my painting, as in my music, I love detail and precision, I’m a ‘perfectionist’, I mean that I always want to exploit my abilities to the highest degree. I want to continually challenge myself, without leaving anything unattempted in respect to those things in which I’m interested. So I want continually to prove myself.
Perhaps through this continuous (and surely useless!) search for perfection, I hope to find the calmness of my spirit…
Link: Carla’s website
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